When a child reaches the young age of a few months, the child and caretaker begin to develop a harmonic meeting of the minds. This is largely achieved through a coordination of behavior that begins with eye contact. For example, the child may look into its mother's eyes and smile or laugh. This, in turn, will cause the mother to smile or laugh in response. This coordination of behavior has been described using terms such as interactive synchrony, matching, coherence, co-occurrence, attunement, and, more generally, bonding. For simplicity, this face-to-face coordination of behavior between child and caretaker will herein generally be referred to as attunement.
Attunement occurs when a caretaker and infant synchronize their gaze patterns and the affective tone of their interaction. As the caretaker is sensitive and responsive to changes in the child's emotions, the child responds to the caretaker's sensitive behaviors. As caretaker and child become attuned to each other, their interactions become more synchronized and harmonious.
It has been found that attunement is important both for establishing a successful relationship between the child and caretaker and for promoting the infant's emotional development. The importance of this face-to-face coordination of behavior between child and caretaker continues throughout infancy and into toddlerhood.
Attunement between a child and caretaker is critical for the establishment of a mutual understanding between the child and the caregiver. Attunement has been shown to produce a decrease in negative behavior, such as crying and infant gaze aversion, as well as in increase in positive behaviors, such as attentiveness and affective displays, e.g. smiling and laughing. In general, attunement results in a child having an increased enjoyment of the caretaker-child interactions. As such, attunement is an important factor in developing a relationship that is close, mutually binding, cooperative, and affectively positive. Children growing up with caretakers who are responsive to their needs and whose interactions are infused with happy emotions adopt a willing, responsive stance toward caretaker influence.
Attunement also plays an important role in promoting the emotional development of the child. A child's learning of social skills and conventional forms of communication and culture begins with attunement. A child who does not experience attunement has difficulty forming healthy attachments and is more likely to become emotionally brittle. It has also been theorized that attunement buffers the child against excessive surges of emotion and helps orchestrate genetic signals that govern optimal brain development during childhood as well as further into adolescence and young adulthood.